Things  Which  Cannot 
be  Shaken 


JOHN  HENRY  JOWETT 
M.A.,  D.D. 


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in  2014 


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Things  Which  Cannot 
be  Shaken 


A  SERMON 

Delivered  in  the 
Fifth  Avenue  Pregbyterian  Church 
New  York  City 
May  9th,  1915 


By  the  Pastor,  the 

REV.  JOHN  HENRY  JOWETT 

M.A.,  D.D. 


I  -nil  ltd  by  ill  Filth  Avenue  I'icsbyleiiao  Ctiunb 


All  Rights  Reserved 


Things  Which  Cannot  be  Shaken 

By  Dr.  Jowett 


"'Things  which  cannot  be  shaken."—  Heb.  12:27 


THERE  are  seasons  in  life  when  everything 
seems  to  be  shaking.  Old  landmarks  are 
crumbling.  Venerable  foundations  are 
up-heaved  in  a  night,  and  are  scattered  abroad  as 
dust.  Guiding  buoys  snap  their  moorings,  and  go 
drifting  down  the  channel.  Institutions  which  prom- 
ised to  outlast  the  hills  collapse  like  a  stricken 
tent.  Assumptions  in  which  everybody  trusted 
burst  like  air-balloons.  Everything  seems  to  lose 
its  base,  and  trembles  in  uncertainty  and  confusion. 

Such  seasons  are  known  in  our  personal  life. 
One  day  our  circumstances  appear  to  share  the  un- 
shaken solidity  of  the  planet,  and  our  security  is 
complete.  And  then  some  undreamed-of  an- 
tagonism assaults  our  life.  We  speak  of  it  as  a 
bolt  from  the  blue !  Perhaps  it  is  some  stunning 
disaster  in  business.  Or  perhaps  death  has  leaped 
into  our  quiet  meadows.  Or  perhaps  some  pre- 
sumptuous sin  has  suddenly  revealed  its  foul  face 
in  the  life  of  one  of  our  children.  And  we  are  "all 
at  sea !"  Our  little,  neat  hypotheses  crumple  like 
withered  leaves.  Our  accustomed  roads  are  all 
broken  up,  our  conventional  ways  of  thinking  and 
feeling;  and  the  sure  sequences  on  which  we  have 


depended  vanish  in  a  night.  It  is  experiences  like 
these  which  make  the  soul  cry  out  with  the  psalm- 
ist, in  bewilderment  and  fear— "My  foot  slippeth!" 
His  customary  foothold  had  given  way.  The 
ground  was  shaking  beneath  him.  The  founda- 
tions trembled. 

And  such  seasons  are  known  in  a  life  of  nations. 
An  easy-going  traditionalism  can  be  overturned  in 
a  single  blast.  Conventional  standards,  which 
seemed  to  have  the  fixedness  of  the  stars,  are  blown 
to  the  winds.  Political  and  economic  safeguards 
go  down  like  wooden  fences  before  an  angry  sea. 
The  apparently  solid  structure  begins  to  dissolve. 
The  customary  foundations  of  society  are  shaken. 
We  must  surely  have  had  such  experiences  as  these 
during  the  past  few  weeks  and  more  especially 
during  the  last  few  days.  What  was  unthinkable 
has  become  a  commonplace.  The  impossible  has 
happened.  Our  working  assumptions  are  in  ruins. 
Common  securities  have  vanished.  And  on  every 
side  men  and  women  are  whispering  the  question- 
Where  are  we?  We  are  all  staggered !  And  every- 
where men  and  women,  in  their  own  way,  are  whis- 
pering the  confession  of  the  psalmist— "My  foot 
slippeth  I" 

Well,  where  are  we?  Amid  all  these  violations 
of  our  ideals,  and  the  quenching  of  our  hopes,  in 
this  riot  of  barbarism  and  unutterable  sorrow, 
where  are  we?  Where  can  we  find  a  footing? 
Where  can  we  stay  our  souls?  Where  can  we  set 
our  feet  as  upon  solid  rock?  Amid  the  many  things 
which  are  shaking  what  things  are  there  which  can- 


not  be  shaken?  I  wish  this  morning  to  explore  the 
Word  of  God,  to  recall  one  or  two  of  these  assur- 
ances in  order  that  we  may  stay  our  souls  upon 
them  in  the  terrible  strain  and  uncertainty  through 
which  we  are  passing,  and  in  which  we  may  have 
to  live  for  many  succeeding  days. 

"Things  which  cannot  be  shaken."  Let  us  be- 
gin here:  The  supremacy  of  spiritual  forces  can- 
not be  shaken.  The  obtrusive  circumstances  of  the 
hour  shriek  against  that  creed.  Spiritual  forces 
seem  to  be  overwhelmed.  We  are  witnessing  a 
perfect  carnival  of  insensate  materialism.  The 
narratives  which  fill  the  columns  of  the  daily  press 
reek  with  the  fierce  spectacle  of  barbaric  labor  and 
achievement.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  this  appalling 
outrage  upon  the  senses,  we  must  steadily  beware 
of  becoming  the  victims  of  the  apparent  and  the 
transient.  Behind  the  unchartered  riot  there  hides 
a  power  whose  invisible  energy  is  the  real  master 
of  the  field.  The  ocean  can  be  lashed  by  the  winds 
into  indescribable  fury,  and  the  breakers  may  rise 
and  fall  in  crashing  weight  and  disaster ;  and  yet 
behind  and  beneath  all  the  wild  phenomena  there 
is  a  subtle,  mystical  force  which  is  exerting  its 
silt;nt  mastery  even  at  the  very  height  of  the  storm. 
We  must  discriminate  between  the  phenomenal  and 
the  spiritual,  between  the  event  of  the  hour  and 
the  drift  of  the  year,  between  the  issue  of  a  battle 
and  the  tendency  of  a  campaign.  All  of  which 
means  that  "While  we  look  at  the  things  which 
are  seen,  we  are  also  to  look  at  the  things  which 
a"-e  not  seen."    Well,  look  at  them. 


The  power  of  truth  can  never  he  shaken.  The 
force  of  disloyalty  may  have  its  hour  of  triumph, 
and  treachery  may  march  for  a  season  to  victory 
after  victory;  but  all  the  while  truth  is  secretly  ex- 
ercising her  mastery,  and  in  the  long  run  the  labor 
of  falsehood  will  crumble  into  ruin.  There  is  no 
permanent  conquest  for  a  lie.  You  can  no  more 
keep  the  truth  interred  than  you  could  keep  the 
Lord  interred  in  Joseph's  tomb.  You  cannot  bury 
the  truth,  you  cannot  strangle  her,  you  cannot  even 
shake  her !  You  may  burn  up  the  records  of  truth, 
but  you  cannot  impair  the  truth  itself !  When  the 
records  are  reduced  to  ashes  truth  shall  walk 
abroad  as  an  indestructible  angel  and  minister  of 
the  Lord!  "He  shall  give  His  angels  charge  over 
thee,"  and  truth  is  one  of  His  angels,  and  she  can- 
not be  destroyed. 

There  was  a  people  in  the  olden  days  who 
sought  to  find  security  in  falsehood,  and  to  con- 
struct a  sovereignty  by  the  aid  of  broken  covenants. 
Let  me  read  to  you  their  boasts  as  it  is  recorded  by 
the  prophet  Isaiah :  "We  have  made  a  covenant 
with  death,  and  with  hell  are  we  at  agreement : 
when  the  overflowing  scourge  shall  pass  through, 
it  shall  not  come  unto  us,  for  we  have  made  lies 
our  refuge,  and  under  falsehood  have  we  hid  our- 
selves." And  so  they  banished  truth.  But  ban- 
ished truth  is  not  vanquished  truth.  Truth  is  never 
idle;  she  is  ever  active  and  ubiquitous,  she  is  for- 
ever and  forever  our  antagonist  or  our  frieriid. 
"Therefore  thus  saith  the  Lord  God  .  .  .  yoiir 
covenant  with  death  shall  be  disannulled,  and  your 
6  \ 


agreement  with  hell  shall  not  stand:  .  .  .  and 
the  hail  shall  sweep  away  the  refuge  of  lies,  and  the 
waters  shall  overflow  the  hiding-place."  Thus 
saith  the  Lord !  We  may  silence  a  fort,  but  we 
cannot  paralyze  the  truth.  Amid  all  the  material 
convulsions  of  the  day  the  supremacy  of  truth  re- 
mains unshaken.  "The  mouth  of  the  Lord  hath 
spoken  it." 

"Things  which  cannot  be  shaken!"  What  is 
there  which  cannot  be  shaken?  The  passion  of 
freedom  is  a  spiritual  force  which  abides  unshaken. 
The  passion  of  freedom  is  one  of  the  rarest  of 
spiritual  flames,  and  it  cannot  be  quenched.  Make 
your  appeal  to  history.  Again  and  again  militar- 
ism has  sought  to  crush  it,  but  it  has  seemed  to 
share  the  very  life  of  God.  Brutal  inspirations 
have  tried  to  smother  it,  but  it  has  breathed  an  in- 
destructible life.  Study  its  energy  in  the  historical 
records  of  this  Book  or  in  annals  of  a  wider  field. 
Study  the  passion  of  freedom  amid  the  oppressions 
of  Egypt,  or  in  the  captivity  of  Babylon,  or  in  the 
servitude  of  Rome.  How  does  the  passion  ex- 
press itself?  "If  I  forget  thee,  O  Jerusalem,  may 
my  tongue  cleave  to  the  roof  of  my  mouth,  and 
may  my  right  hand  forget  her  cunning!"  Study 
it  in  the  glowing  pages  of  the  history  of  this  coun- 
try, that  breath  of  free  aspiration  which  no  power 
of  armament,  and  no  menace  of  material  strength 
Was  ever  able  to  destroy.  The  mightiest  force  in 
all  those  days  was  not  the  power  of  threat,  and 
jVKwder,  and  sword,  but  that  breath  of  invincible 
(aspiration  which  was  the  very  breath  of  God.  And 


when  we  gaze  upon  stricken  Belgium  to-day,  and 
look  upon  her  sorrows,  and  her  smitten  fields, 
and  her  ruined  cities,  and  her  desolate  homes,  we 
can  firmly  and  confidently  proclaim  that  the  breath 
of  that  divinely  planted  aspiration,  her  passion  of 
freedom,  will  prove  to  be  mightier  than  all  the 
materialistic  strength  and  all  the  prodigious  arma- 
ments which  seem  to  have  laid  her  low.  It  is  a 
reality  which  cannot  be  shaken. 

There  are  other  spiritual  forces  which  we  might 
have  named,  and  which  would  have  manifested  the 
same  incontestable  supremacy:  there  is  the  energy 
of  meekness,  that  spirit  of  docility  which  com- 
munes with  the  Almighty  in  hallowed  and  receptive 
awe:  there  is  the  boundless  vitality  of  love  which 
lives  on  through  midnight  after  midnight,  unfaint- 
ing  and  unspent:  there  is  the  inexhaustible  energy 
of  faith  which  holds  on  and  out  amid  the  massed 
hostilities  of  all  its  foes.  "And  at  midnight  Paul 
and  Silas  sang  praises  unto  God!"  You  cannot 
defeat  spirits  like  these,  you  cannot  crush  and  de- 
stroy them.  You  cannot  hold  them  under,  for 
their  supremacy  shares  the  holy  sovereignty  of  the 
eternal  God.  "Not  by  might,  nor  by  power,  but 
by  my  spirit,  saith  the  Lord ;"  and  these  spirits,  the 
spirit  of  truth,  the  spirit  of  freedom,  the  spirit  of 
meekness  and  love,  are  in  fellowship  with  the  di- 
vine Spirit,  and  therefore  shall  they  remain  un- 
shaken. 

Look  again  over  the  field  of  "things  which  can- 
not be  shaken"  amid  all  the  boastful  and  callous 
materialism  of  our  time,  and  consider  this:  Th\ 


law  of  moral  retribution  cannot  be  shaken.  What- 
ever is  happening  just  now  on  the  Continent  of 
Europe  cannot  for  one  moment  abrogate  or  shake 
the  eternal  law  that  unrighteousness  is  rottenness, 
and  that  iniquity  is  disease.  Nothing  that  is  hap- 
pening can  bribe  the  nature  of  things  and  inter- 
fere with  the  dire  and  deadly  sequence  of  cause 
and  effect.  And  what  is  the  law  of  moral  retribu- 
tion? It  is  this:  "The  wages  of  sin  is  death." 
Nothing  can  shatter  that !  By  no  possible  human 
device  or  expedient,  and  by  no  brilliancy  of  mo- 
mentary triumph  can  we  cheat  that  law,  and  escape 
the  long  reach  of  its  inevitable  process.  "The 
wages  of  sin  is  death."  Not  a  death  far-away  re- 
moved, which  allows  a  long  interval  of  undisturbed 
vitality.  The  invasion  of  death  is  immediate.  The 
entrance  of  death  is  coincident  with  the  sin.  This 
kind  of  death  is  not  a  final  crisis,  it  is  a 
present  process,  it  is  not  a  swift  annihilation, 
it  is  a  sure  decay.  When  we  sin  our  nobler 
powers  at  once  begin  to  die,  our  nobler  strength 
begins  to  waste.  There  is  no  escape  from 
the  sequence.  "The  wages  of  sin"  is  coma,  cal- 
losity, benumbment,  death.  Every  sinful  deed 
houses  its  own  nemesis,  and  the  nemesis  becomes 
active  at  once.  Nay,  we  may  give  the  statement  a 
more  piercing  inwardness  still.  Every  iniquitous 
thought  and  purpose  harbors  its  own  nemesis,  its 
own  hostile  and  destructive  germ,  a  germ  which 
proceeds  to  immediate  consumption.  When  we  sin 
something  dies,  the  nobler  man  or  woman  shrinks 
and  shrivels,  and  is  despoiled  of  some  of  the  forces 


of  vitality.  That  is  the  law  of  moral  retribution. 
Study  that  law  of  retribution  in  the  recorded  his- 
tory of  King  Saul.  You  can  watch  the  gradual 
process  of  benumbment,  like  a  creeping  paralysis, 
stealing  over  the  soul.  Study  that  law  in  the 
tragedy  of  Macbeth.  It  would  not  be  impertinent, 
from  the  standpoint  of  our  present  thought,  to  de- 
scribe the  entire  narrative  as  the  record  of  the 
dying  of  Macbeth.  Or  study  the  law  in  the  won- 
derful pages  of  Richard  III.  In  that  great  drama, 
as  also  in  Macbeth,  the  outer  activity  increases  as 
the  inward  vitality  shrinks.  Nay,  now  and  again 
there  are  spasms,  or  even  seasons,  of  seeming 
triumph,  while  all  the  time  you  can  almost  see  the 
fell  law  at  work,  dismantling  the  soul,  drying  up 
its  vital  energies,  and  holding  it  in  the  clammy  grip 
of  inevitable  and  unbribable  death.  "The  wages 
of  sin  is  death :"  amid  all  the  tremblings  and  the 
uncertainties  of  life  that  law  remains  unshaken. 

And  the  law  applies,  with  equal  inevitableness, 
to  the  individual  and  the  nation.  "The  wages  of 
sin  is  death."  That  is  to  say,  in  the  corporate  life 
of  a  nation  unrighteousness  is  always  associated 
with  disease  and  decay.  A  nation  can  never  remain 
intensely  virile  if  she  is  in  fellowship  with  wrong. 
There  is  an  inward  deterioration  whatever  flush  of 
transient  victory  may  rest  upon  her  arms.  Her 
conquests  are  only  apparent,  for  she  herself  is  thl,e 
victim  of  a  most  awful  and  corroding  defeat. 

Brethren,  on  the  continent  of  Europe  to-day  the 
law  of  moral  retribution  is  at  work.  Our  newsn 
papers  to-day  record  one  form  of  death,  and  the^ 


lists  wring  our  hearts  with  the  suggestion  of  im- 
measurable agony  and  woe.  But  there  is  another 
form  of  death,  far  more  terrible  than  this,  and  of 
which  our  papers  can  give  us  no  account — the 
wasting  decay  of  national  soul,  a  decay  which  is 
the  wages  of  sin,  the  effects  of  the  violation  of  the 
pure  and  holy  law  of  God.  It  cannot  be  escaped. 
It  is  as  inevitable  as  God.  Sin  is  death:  for  the 
mouth  of  the  Lord  hath  spoken  it.  I  find  a 
steadying  confidence  in  all  this,  and  I  quiet  my  own 
bewildered  heart  in  its  assurance.  Our  worship 
to-day  is  darkened  with  an  appalling  gloom.  We 
cannot  drive  the  darkness  from  our  minds,  and  we 
ought  not  to  do  so  if  we  could.  It  is  our  sacred 
duty  to  feel  the  heaviness  of  the  pall,  to  be  crushed 
before  it,  to  let  its  chilling  blackness  fill  every 
chamber  of  the  soul.  There  are  grave  times  when 
it  is  moral  treachery  even  to  wish  to  shake  things 
off;  when  the  only  way  to  an  enlightened  and 
courageous  action  is  to  feel  an  occurrence  upon  the 
raw  nerves,  and  upon  the  exposed  and  undefended 
heart. 

I  call  you  to  witness  that  during  the  past  eight 
months  not  a  word  has  been  spoken  from  this  pul- 
pit which  could  in  the  least  degree  tend  to  inflame 
the  passions  of  war,  or  deepen  and  widen  the  gulf 
of  misunderstanding  and  prejudice  between  peoples 
who  are  now  at  strife.  I  have  sought  for  the  wider 
view,  and  the  larger  truth,  and  the  august  aims  and 
purposes  of  the  Kingdom,  in  which  we  could  all 
find  inspiration  and  communion.  I  have  remem- 
bered that  I  am  an  Englishman,  and  that  I  have  in 


11 


the  fellowship  of  this  congregation  men  and  women 
of  German  blood  who  are  bound  up  with  German 
ties  and  affections.  I  hold  these  friends  in  the 
dearest  admiration  and  regard,  and  it  is  my  hap- 
piness to  believe  that  I  enjoy  their  esteem  and  con- 
fidence. But  here  is  a  happening  which  pushes 
far  beyond  questions  of  racial  frontier  lines.  It 
is  not  a  restricted  matter  of  nationality.  It  is  a 
tremendous  issue  of  common  humanity,  and  for 
any  pulpit  to  be  silent  on  such  an  issue  would  be 
rank-  recreancy  to  the  just  and  holy  Lord.  The  sink- 
ing of  the  Lusitania,  and  sinking  her  without  warn- 
ing, and  without  giving  any  opportunity  even  for 
women  and  little  children  to  escape,  is  a  stupendous 
crime  against  our  race  and  a  colossal  sin  against 
our  God.  It  is  not  manly  and  honorable  warfare.  It 
is  foul  and  premeditated  murder.  It  is  not  an  ad- 
vance into  more  chivalrous  methods  of  struggle.  It 
is  a  relapse  into  dark  and  savage  barbarism !  Two 
weeks  ago  there  sat  in  this  church,  and  worshipped 
with  us,  one  of  nry  people,  a  young  mother,  who 
sailed  on  this  ill-fated  liner.  To-day  two  of  her 
little  ones,  such  wee  ones,  just  the  smallest  span  of 
years,  are  lost  in  the  waste  of  waters.  Men,  how- 
does  that  help  the  war,  and  what  issue  is  advanced 
by  outrages  like  these?  It  is  altogether  unthink- 
able, and  in  these  supposedly  enlightened  and  pro- 
gressive days  it  seems  to  be  so  unreal  that  one 
half  expects  at  any  moment  to  awake  as  from  a 
horrible  dream.  But  the  grim  reality  is  here;  it  is 
here  in  weeping  widows,  and  lonely  little  children, 
and  cold  and  desolate  homes.    And  in  this  house1 


1? 


of  God,  the  house  of  a  just  and  righteous  God,  I 
join  with  tens  of  thousands  of  my  fellow -ministers 
in  this  country  in  execrating  the  terrible  deed,  and 
most  fervently  do  I  pray  that  a  great  wave  of  pure 
and  purposeful  and  active  indignation  may  sweep 
round  the  globe,  and  that  even  Germany  herself 
may  rise  in  stern  and  holy  protest  against  the  in- 
famy which  on  Friday  was  perpetrated  in  her  name. 

Amid  all  the  ruins  of  things  which  are  being  dis- 
solved the  sovereignty  of  the  Lord  God  remains 
unshaken.  Earth-born  clouds  may  veil  His  throne, 
they  cannot  destroy  His  decrees.  The  heavy  cloud 
of  circumstance  gathered  about  the  life  of  the 
prophet  Isaiah,  and  he  walked  in  uncertainty  and 
confusion,  as  though  his  Lord  had  been  taken 
away.  But  "in  the  year  that  King  Uzziah  died  I 
saw  the  Lord,  high  and  lifted  up!"  Yes,  but  in 
the  day  of  obscurity,  before  the  robe  of  darkness 
was  rent,  the  holy  Lord  was  still  there,  and  so 
were  the  cherubim,  and  the  seraphim,  and  all  the 
ministering  angels  of  righteousness  and  grace. 
"The  Lord  cometh  in  the  thick  cloud!"  When 
Abraham  Lincoln  was  assassinated,  and  the 
American  people  were  stunned  by  the  blow,  a  vast 
crowd  gathered  in  their  bewilderment  around  the 
White  House,  and  James  Garfield  came  out  upon 
the  balcony  of  the  house  and  cried  aloud,  in  the 
words  of  an  ancient  Psalmist:  "Clouds  and  dark- 
ness are  round  about  Him,  righteousness  and  judg- 
ment are  the  habitation  of  His  throne." 

Yes,  we  must  distinguish  between  the  earth-born 
clouds  and  the  divine  judgments,  between  the  battle- 


smoke  and  the  great  white  throne.  God's  sover- 
eignty may  be  hid,  it  can  never  be  stayed  or  broken. 
This  book  of  the  Scriptures  is  a  stormy  book, 
stormy  from  end  to  end.  And  yet  it  reveals  the 
sovereignty  of  God.  The  revelation  of  the  sover- 
eignty of  God  is  not  given  only  in  green  pastures, 
and  in  a  balmy  air,  and  under  a  blue  and  radiant 
sky.  It  is  given  amid  social  convulsions  and  up- 
heavals, in  the  presence  of  menace  and  terror, 
amid  the  massed  assemblies  of  material  hosts.  The 
revelation  of  His  sovereignty  is  given  when  the 
pestilence  is  walking  in  darkness,  and  it  is  given 
when  destruction  is  wasting  at  noonday.  It  is 
given  when  the  hurricane  is  sweeping  the  land, 
and  when  all  the  watercourses  have  overflowed 
their  banks.  The  Lord  is  revealed  as  King  in  the 
flood!  I  turn  to  the  Book  of  Revelation.  It  is  full 
of  dread  and  appalling  movement.  Dragons  and 
beasts  are  rising  mysteriously  out  of  the  sea,  and 
upon  their  heads  is  the  name  of  blasphemy.  Mul- 
titudes are  worshipping  the  beast,  and  the  earth  is 
choked  with  abominations.  But  in  the  thick  of  all 
the  fierce,  rebellious  movement,  and  in  the  very 
hey-day  of  unclean  and  hateful  things,  there  is 
"the  voice  of  a  great  multitude,  as  the  voice  of 
many  waters,  and  as  the  voice  of  mighty  thunders, 
saying,  'Hallelujah :  for  the  Lord  God  omnipotent, 
reigneth !' " 

Brethren,  the  sovereignty  of  the  Lord  God  can- 
not be  shaken.  "God's  in  His  heaven!"  But  the 
assurance  of  that  sovereignty  is  not  to  lull  us  into 
laxity  and  ease.   The  revelation  can  be  abused.  It 


can  be  used  as  a  sedative  by  the  indolent,  when  it 
is  purposed  to  be  a  tonic  for  the  faithful.  I  do 
not  know  any  word  which  has  been  more  perverted 
than  Browning's  great  line:  "God's  in  His  Heaven! 
All's  right  with  the  world!"  It  has  been  frequently 
used  as  a  lullaby,  when  it  is  intended  to  be  a 
clarion.  It  has  been  proclaimed  as  an  invitation 
to  the  green  pastures  and  the  still  waters,  when  it 
is  in  reality  a  call  to  tread  the  steep  and  thorny 
ways  of  righteousness,  and  if  need  be  to  march 
fearlessly  into  the  valley  of  the  shadow  of  death 
"God's  in  His  heaven!  All's  right  with  the  world!" 
That  song  of  wandering  little  Pippa  invaded  the 
hell  of  the  sensualist  not  with  the  ministry  of  light 
but  of  lightning.  It  smote  the  ears  of  one  who 
was  being  betrayed  to  ignoble  ease,  and  it  recovered 
him  to  the  stern  uplands  of  a  chivalrous  crusade. 
It  stole  upon  one  who  had  become  entangled  in 
ways  of  treachery  and  dishonor,  and  he  arose  and 
freed  himself  from  his  toils.  "God's  in  His 
heaven  !"  "The  Lord  reigneth  !"  Every  man,  then, 
to  his  duty,  that  with  both  hands  and  a  consecrated 
soul  he  may  whole-heartedly  do  the  King's  will. 

"  The  Son  of  God  goes  forth  to  war, 
A  kingly  crown  to  gain, 
His  blood-red  banner  streams  afar. 
Wlio  follows  in  His  train  ?  " 

The  supremacy  of  spiritual  force  cannot  be 
shaken.  The  law  of  moral  retribution  cannot  be 
shaken.  The  holy  sovereignty  of  the  eternal  God 
c,-,nnot  be  shaken.  What  then?  Let  us  endow  all 
cir  doings  with  the  indestructible  energy  of  recti - 
is 


i 


tude.  Let  us  make  to  ourselves  friends  of  the  law 
of  moral  retribution,  and  transform  its  processes 
into  ministries  of  vital  fellowship.  Let  us  in  all 
things  "grow  up  into  God,"  and  seek  the  crown 
and  consummation  of  life  in  perfected  conformity 
to  His  will.  And  what  shall  be  the  strength  and 
protectives  of  such  a  life?  Even  this:  "Thou 
shalt  not  be  afraid  for  the  terror  by  night,  nor  for 
the  arrow  that  flieth  by  day,  for  the  pestilence  that 
walketh  in  darkness,  nor  for  the  destruction  that 
wasteth  at  noon-day."  And  what  shall  be  the  se- 
curity of  such  a  people?  Even  this:  "God  is  our 
refuge  and  strength !  .  .  .  Therefore  will  we 
not  fear  though  the  earth  be  removed,  and  *7 
though  the  mountains  be  shaken  into  the  heart  of 
the  seas.  .  .  .  God  is  in  the  midst  of  her,  she 
shall  not  be  moved."  "He  that  doeth  these  things 
shall  never  be  moved."  "Hallelujah,  the  Lord  God 
omnipotent  reigneth !" 


16 


